The Indian government is pushing a bold proposal that would make scholarly literature accessible for free to everyone in the country

Gold open access based on APCs has a number of potential advantages. It would scale with the growth in research outputs, there are potential system-wide savings, and reuse is simplified. Research funders generally reimburse publication charges, but even with broad funder support the details regarding the funding arrangements within universities it remain to be fully worked out. It is unclear where the market will set OA publication charges: they are currently lower than the historical average cost of article publication; about 25% of authors are from developing countries;

The APC model itself has become more complicated, with variable APCs (e.g. based on length), discounts, prepayments and institutional membership schemes, offsetting and bundling arrangements for hybrid publications, an individual membership scheme, and so on (page 91; 93).

Journals in which all peer reviewed scholarly articles are online available without any restrictions and for which an Article Processing Charge (APC) has been paid.